Ask Me
by Raidersrule76
Summary: Some questions simply need to be answered. Oneshot


_for caaaaastletooooon! _

* * *

"Ask me."

He eyed her, incredulous. "The hell do you mean by that?" Convinced she was joking, Carson barked out a harsh, guttural laugh. "Like you'll just tell me? Do you think I'm deficient, or what?"

Raven was unmoving, and unblinking. "I mean it, ask me and I'll tell you."

Carson shook his head, still chuckling to himself. "You're full of shit, that's what you are. Miss 'I-Need-A-Talking-Mirror-To-Express-Myself,' the ultimate introvert, telling me that she'll be upfront and straightforward about her feelings?"

Infuriatingly, she nodded. "In a nutshell, yes."

"Oh, come on..." Still, he eyed her, intrigued. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. One hundred percent. Just ask and I'll tell you."

Carson raised an eyebrow. Surely this was some sort of trap. Yes, that was it. A trap, concocted in that hellish nightmare that Raven called her brain. Using her feminine wiles, she would slowly, surely, coerce him into asking the most revealing question you could possibly ask a teenage girl. And then, once it was asked, she would spring her trap.

Trap? What was the trap? A cougar! Yes, a cougar, straight from the fiery bowels of hell. One that would be flung at him, clawing his face to ribbons, and all the while she would simply hover over his bloodied form, cackling like a madwoman. And the tentacle rape--oh, dear lord, the tentacle rape!

"And afterward," said Raven, snapping him out of his trance, "you can explain just where that asinine fantasy came from."

_What the-- _"Y-you're not telepathic!" he stammered out, his voice cracking pitifully.

Raven smirked. "I don't need to be; you're frightfully easy to read. So how about it? I'll tell you, if you explain that fantasy to me."

"Why do you want to know so badly?" Cursed girl; she was actually piquing his curiosity more! _If this isn't entrapment, then the legal definition needs a serious revision._

"Simple. They're hilarious, and they prove my theory that you are, in fact, full of shit." She wasn't even bothering to stand; she'd just started levitating off the ground. Probably got tired of being on her feet.

_Does she fuck with everybody like this, or am I just special?_

"I'll play along." Easy, non-committal, and it didn't make him sound like the salivating dog he was. _Good thing she doesn't have a bell._

"Then you won't mind at all going first, will you?" There was a sort of triumphant gleam in Raven's eyes as she muttered this statement. She was cocky; it was her home turf. Remove the freaky mirror, the bizarre, circular bed, and paint it a nice, healthy turquoise, and then they'd see just how easy this would be for her. _Who's laughing now, huh? It's turquoise! Don't like it? Suck it!_

"And as much as I'm enjoying this awkward silence, I wouldn't object to an answer. And by 'answer,' I, of course, mean 'yes.'"

Carson swallowed. He could easily refuse to not play her game, brand Raven as immature, and stride out of her room in a huff, post on a livejournal, go to a sock-hop, whatever the hell kids do, did, will do.

But the answer hung before him, tantalizingly. It sang a song sweeter than the Siren's, a song that whispered past his ears like a cool breeze on an autumn day. It flowed in him, filled him with euphoria, a relief, a near-sexual sense of release.

_Shit, this is getting kinky. What kind of a sick fuck am I?_

"Fine." He shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. "But only if you ask first."

Raven blinked at the unexpected scenario, but seemed unwilling to relinquish the high ground. "Very well then. Mr. Carson Elam, would you care to explain your bizarre thought-process just now?"

And explain he did--the wiles, the cougar, the cackling like a madwoman. The tentacle rape was, of course, omitted. Some things are meant to be private.

Nonetheless, she laughed. She did not, as Starfire put it, "roflcopter," (a side effect of her recent discovery of the internet was her rapid absorption of internet slang) though it was clear that she derived some level of humor from his paranoia. "Classic," she said, "simply classic. Honestly Carson, there's surreal and then there's 'what the fuck,' and you blur the line between the two daily."

"Yeah, I'm a real Salvador Dali," he said. The words sprang from his mouth like horses leaping onto the racetrack. "Now will you just answer me?"

"Only if you ask me."

_Trap. Total trap. Don't ask. Walk away. Don't play her game._

"Have you slept with Beast Boy yet?"

_You know what? You're on your own, big guy._

"The answer is a resounding...no. No I haven't."

The answer hit Carson like a ton of bricks. "I beg your--excuse me?"

Raven shrugged. "I haven't. We haven't. We're not going to, not for a good long time." She levitated herself to her bed and plopped onto it, dangling her legs off the side. "Intimacy is an issue with me, and the act requires quite a bit of that. I'm not ready, and he sure as hell isn't. So, no. No we haven't."

The answer certainly took the lad by surprise, though he did his damndest to not show it. Having become the veritable embodiment of the phrase "cool as a cucumber," he was confident that his surprise could be neatly bottled up and suppressed. It was an art that had been mastered through years of rigorous training, and M. Night Shyamalan movies.

"And I'm guessing from your gaping jaw that you weren't expecting that?"

_Well, damn I suck. _"I gotta be honest," he said, running a hand through his hair, "I really wasn't."

"It's quite all right," Raven replied, lying back on the bed. "I should warn you, unless you want to stick around for two and a half hours of sitting and rhythmic chanting, you may want to leave."

Carson angled his head. "Are the Benedictines coming by?"

She tossed a pillow at him, aiming for (and missing) his head. "Meditation. And that wasn't actually a request."

He backed away, hands held up in submission. "Fine, fine, I'm gone. Don't miss me too much." The door slid open as he stepped through it.

"Oh, and Carson?"

He turned his head around and leaned back into the room. "Mm?"

"You forgot the tentacle rape."

The color drained from Carson's face. "What tentacle rape?" His voice was an absolute deadpan, the monotone to end all monotones.

"C'mon, there's always tentacle rape. Haven't you ever been to Japan?" And this time, she laughed, her voice full of mirth, resounding with repressed joy that seldom expressed itself. Smiling, emasculated but still pleased, Carson let the door slide shut behind him, the sound of her laughter still resounding in the hall, followed by the sound of shattering glass, and a string of the most foul curses ever created by the human race...which followed with yet another bout of shattering glass.

* * *

"...the enhanced transformation effects are simply wondifferous! Truly, and most assuredly so, 'Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon Super S: The Movie,' is among the greatest--nay, I daresay 'tis the very greatest work of humanity since the discovery of fried cheese!" a clearly euphoric Starfire gushed, vocally, as she pounded away on the keyboard of the Titan's mainframe computer.

Carson glanced at the screen, squinting. _I have to squint? Must be getting old. _"IMDB?"

"She's been like this for hours," chimed the voice of Beast Boy. Carson glanced over his shoulder and saw the shape shifter slumped on the couch, arms slung over the backrest, head hung in a nonverbal expression of defeat. "She gets like this every month, so you'd think I'd be used to it by now."

Carson glanced back at the screen. "Tamaranian PMS?"

Beast Boy nodded. "It's like pretty pink fuzzy-wuzzy cuddly-wuddly pretty-sailor-soldier Hell."

"I suspect it's no worse than half-demon PMS." He sat himself down on an armrest and watched the screen. His eyes followed the constant, steady stream of letters that filled the review page. _The girl can out-spell MS Word. _

A thought occurred to him, and he once more turned his attention to Beast Boy. Casually, he posed a question. "So, have you slept with Raven yet?"

His entire mood seemed to evaporate, then precipitate again as self-satisfaction. He grinned at Carson. "Oh, definitely!"

* * *

**I'd forgotten how much I can enjoy this. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to write without ham-handing in subtext and clever metaphors and what-not. **

**Really, this is a treat for people who actually read the shit I've posted on here. No, don't argue, it is. I've come to understand that. Fan fiction is, inherently, flawed, and mine's got the lion's share.**

**It could be worse. I could be MasterOfDemons. **

**Anyone hear from him? I miss his stories.**

**Getting back on topic, I don't know what it is that I'm going to do here. I've all but given up on the Carson series. Truth be told, I don't think there's anything I can do with it. I adore the character of Pavayne, and I'd like to tweak Carson around to make him less obviously Mary-Sue-ish, but the plot, the minor characters, the--the DIALOGUE, Christ, the dialogue--I just don't think there's anything that can be done with it. So I'm jettisoning it. The stories are staying, but I won't be writing more for it.**

**I'd like to finish Convergence. It's a silly, childish story, but it's the simplicity that I like about it. That's what fan fiction should be about, simplicity.**

**Or, if you're SaintH, it's about taking established, two-dimensional characters, and turning them into truly moving pictures of the human condition.**

**Aw, well. Find your own truth, and cling to it until it suffocates and dies. Then, find a new one, and repeat ad infinitum. Just remember this: No matter how terrible you are, don't fret. You could be Leor.**


End file.
